SEC Settles with Great American Gary Aguirre, or Wall Street-Washington Incest Personified
by ilene - June 30th, 2010 3:24 pm
SEC Settles with Great American Gary Aguirre, or Wall Street-Washington Incest Personified
Courtesy of Larry Doyle at Sense on Cents
Thanks very much to a regular reader of Sense on Cents for sharing a fascinating story. The Government Accountability Project just released the following story regarding a significant settlement paid by the SEC to a former SEC attorney Gary Aguirre. This story highlights the Wall Street-Washington incest to the ‘nth’ degree. Will the media pick this story up and highlight it? They should.
With the details provided in this story, Gary Aguirre clearly shows himself to be a great American and as such earns immediate induction into the Sense on Cents Hall of Fame. The General Accountability Project reports SEC Settles with Aguirre:
In what may be the largest settlement of its kind, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has agreed to pay $755,000 to settle the wrongful termination claim of Gary J. Aguirre, the attorney who headed the SEC’s insider trading investigation of Pequot Capital Management until his firing in September 2005.
A judge with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the federal agency with jurisdiction over Aguirre’s termination claim, issued an order today finalizing the settlement. The settlement sum equals Aguirre’s pay for four years and ten months (the elapsed period since his September 2005 discharge), plus his attorneys’ fees. Aguirre agreed to dismiss two related cases against the SEC.
Government Accountability Project Legal Director Tom Devine stated “Unfortunately, this large settlement is the exception that proves the rule. Until Congress provides real protections for financial regulatory employees such as Aguirre, existing law will remain the best excuse for government regulators to turn a blind eye.”
The SEC’s settlement with Aguirre comes one month after the SEC filed insider trading charges against Pequot, its founder, Arthur Samberg, and David Zilkha, a former Pequot employee, based on facts uncovered by Aguirre. Pequot and Samberg paid the SEC $28 million to settle the charges against them. The case against Zilkha continues.
In August 2007, two Senate committees published a scathing 108-page report criticizing the SEC’s decision to fire Aguirre and close the Pequot investigation, which included Pequot’s suspected insider trading in securities of 20 publics companies.
The Senate report chronicles Aguirre’s promising career at the SEC, including management’s decision to give him a two-step pay raise at the end of his first year for “consistently [going] the extra mile, and